CHAPTER IV

Do not shoot the perfectionist. Crucify him! … Intervention in the self-analysis of a profaning flashback. The period of a dizzying inflation of his deranged ego. Damien, the dreamopath, imagined himself to be the ultimate universal hero endowed with a double personality. In the shadow of himself, simultaneously, Petrus Romanus and Kristos Anonymus. (Ungraceful Greco-Latin pseudonyms identifying the famous stateless man whose kingdom is not of this world.)

Sitting and curled up, his forehead resting on his open journal like the Wailing Wall; like an infected compress, he comforts himself and troubles himself at the same time. The effect of two distorting mirrors, reflecting to infinity all things caught, trapped between them.

(July 10

— I have the devil in my body and in my head. Confusion in my soul and in my dream. I do not know whether this is a form of courage or the astonished innocence of my condemned conscience, but the desire to pursue my destiny as an intuitive man is a fact.

The many efforts to install in the studio, now my dwelling, an atmosphere close to my ignored persona are complete. Obvious proof: the asphyxiating paint covering the cracked walls since this morning. The overly strong smell flies away, moves off like a message of bitterness to intoxicating chemistry, toward the floor above. A pestilential emanation unbearable even for your current absence, Nielle.

When you return, I shall demonstrate a tearing cruelty to you. But this cruelty will be directed, in post-mortem conclusion, only against that uncertain reputation which will halo me…

The means envisaged is simple and concrete. More paint. The creation of a mural with a symbolic flavour, dare I say a symbolic smell. The clue that the runt assailing you is still standing. In what other way must I act for you to notice this little being who disgusts you? I do not have the financial means to invite you to the cinema, still less to offer you a meal in a restaurant.

Out of humanism, you could enquire about my morale. After all, have I not recently separated? — Even if I display a certain fair play, the end of a liaison, ten years of marriage vanished, is not lived without shock. You turn your nose up at me as if out of snobbery. Is it because of my poverty? My negligence? My ugliness? My hooked rocker side? — You ignore me completely. Am I too simple?

If the Damien you see does not interest you, would the charisma of a Christ, even an anonymous one, bewitch you? …

Would Petrus Romanus, his antithesis, his culmination or I know not what, charm you (?)…? … It is extravagant! It is mad! … But the strangest thing lies in the fact that these deliriums of my self already existed, latent. Your presence seems to provoke their surge, their catastrophic appearance, and at the same time to weaken them, annihilate them… Do you arrive in my life in time?

Your independence, or your spite, forces my being to roam, to suck in, in a whirlpool, an inspiration of divine appearance. — Nothing less. — But the intention identifies itself as demonic. On this surface I am going to paint. I shall punish God, quite simply! ")

Indispensable but fetid introspection for the purpose of creating an albedo upon his hoped-for deliverance, identical to the full moon guiding a lost werewolf. Damien even remembers fragments of his subsidiary thoughts while he was painting that mural in his new bedroom.

(-"I confess a conscious tendency toward schizophrenia, underlying my Hollywood obsession. An unhealthy desire to sink into madness in order to modify not only my perception of the world, but the universe itself. With the humble intention of making myself noticed. Humble! Because no one believes madmen.

— Resembling Judas’s bilious spit on Jesus, one by one, these splashes of colour cling to the wall. They mark time like the blood of a soul surrendering itself to the devil on an eternal parchment. ")

A slight dizziness takes hold of the dreamopath at the recollection of the pictorial work. Before an inevitably sketched cosmos, two crowned profiles. That of the prima donna of his life… Marilyn, like an insult to Nielle, and his own. Solution to the enigma: the silhouette of Mary Magdalene and that of Kristos, alias Petrus Romanus.

Nielle’s proximity at that time, confusing within him good, evil and the role of these sham heroes, gradually suppressed his real self; he refused to believe in a eunuch, inactive Christ… If Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, why could the Son of Man not have been a discreet gigolo?

Even if, for him, the structure of this malformation of his psyche no longer belongs to mystery, it is impossible for him to date precisely the birth of this extrinsic phenomenon. Nevertheless, he knows its origin… Ecclesiastical brainwashing, excessive valorisation of the priesthood and, finally, praises of puritanism. These were the arguments that could only stimulate deep questioning in a dreaming child. These conjurations resolving themselves in the execution of eschatological threats offering only two exits: the honey of paradise or the mustard up the nose of hell.

"Justice! … Gerechtigkeit! … Justice!"

The dreamopath seeks to exculpate himself. Plea for a cause of supraterrestrial origins.

— Your Honour! Ladies and gentlemen of the jury! Look carefully at my client. Honestly, does he have the appearance of a guilty man? … His long hair, his shaggy beard, his glassy eyes and skin yellowed by marijuana and nicotine smoke, as well as his stupid expression, … do all these not prove his innocence? Two thousand years ago, in Palestine, my client would have gone unnoticed! … A few more centuries, does that count?

Agreed, he pretends to be a Kristos Anonymus by associating himself with a contemporary sex symbol, thereby outraging the notorious streetwalker of the Gospel with his existential fantasies. Cartesian libido, you will say! Know that even for him the objective of his mission on earth remains confused. Do not cry out, but he questions it.

Before entering this respectable court, he confessed to me that he does not know whether he is the last prophet (… the one who, in the Vatican, will give Word to women…)… or the initiator of the Antichrist who will dry out the Church in its belly like a woman violated a hundred times.

Your Honour! Ladies and gentlemen of the jury! Of what wrongs is this man accused? … Of being a charlatan? … No! Quite simply of having been caught in the trap of love three times, and in different ways with each lightning strike.

When he was young, for him already, the dream had no limits. While other children, more athletic, played ball or squabbled, he took refuge in the solitude of his own chimeras. His faculty of imagining, his imaginative power, was so strong that it modified his Oedipus. Every woman he found beautiful became a mother to conquer, upon whom he could sail… Guessing their forms beneath what he called black cases, even the prettiest nuns passed through it.

Then, by magic, a world close to his own settled into his childhood, at once impalpable and true, or false… Television.

This box of living images, like his child’s head, would become his friend; they would exchange tales and stories, knowledge and princesses. And the day came when in the great black-and-white castle appeared the most beautiful of heroines, the fairy Marilyn Monroe. It was his first lightning strike and… Hum! … His first truly conscious erection.

That pleasure, he extended in his imagination until the unhappy summer when he learned of the American actress’s death by suicide. Even the assassination of President Kennedy, a year later, did not affect him as much. The regret of not having been able to save her, by the power of his dreams, made him swear to coddle Marilyn’s soul in the depths of his heart until his own death.

The consequences would have been null had this disappearance not merged with another planetary mourning experienced a few years earlier. The details are precise!

He is seven years old. It is noon. It is summer. His mother and a cousin, much older than he, soften their grief at the news of the death of Pope Pius XII. His imagination and naïve sympathy make him say to these saddened beings, despite the pleasant warmth of the sun: "One day…, I shall be Pope in the Pope’s place!"

Needless to say, a certain trauma infiltrated his developing personality amid the noisy mockery of the rather down-to-earth cousin.

Is a very imaginative seven-year-old child necessarily mad? … Is a very creative eleven-year-old pubescent boy automatically perverse? … No! But what is certain is that a mourning in childhood is the ablation of a part of oneself, fortunately cushioned by the graces of new dreams taking over.

Members of the jury, you know the nature of these new relationships, you know their sources! This Machiavellian intention to establish a universal monarchy with, as queen, the prostitute of the Apocalypse and, as king, … the beast with the twisted number, resides in these childhood experiences of Damien being informed of the death of glorious figures. To all of you in this court, I put the question: … At what moment did this ecumenical fermentation burst into his life? … During what event? …

The celebration! Members of the jury! The celebration! … His energy reserves almost exhausted, his heart tired, his adrenaline at zero, incarnating that role of court jester, he let himself be led by the inertia of his passion when suddenly…!? …

The first shock of the evening. The second lightning strike, that face-to-face with Nielle, preceding by little the third thrill. He was whipped by their contiguity and their emotional charge. Surprised that love had presented someone else to him: … Who or what was it? …

Simply the people, the testimonies, the love these people lavished on him to thank him for his persistence and his intelligent findings, which had "originalised" their celebration. These caustic affections moved him, shook what wisdom and balance remained to him. So much so! … Then, within him, the silhouette of a hero rose up.

With the impression of having been until then an obsolete and sterile creator for society, this upheaval illuminated his soul. No one could guess the wonders he projected in his mind at the proofs of recognition he received. If the little he had granted them as court jester was philanthropic: … What would the limits be, if he were king? … A Kristos Anonymus, a Christ camouflaged in the mass?

It would have been a catastrophe without the presence of Nielle acting as a brake upon the split personality of my client, simultaneously catalysing and neutralising this fantasy of a smoking dervish he was trying to assume. This woman’s independence forced Damien to realise that he was not capable of accomplishing miracles as the role demanded.

Your Honour! Members of the jury! I ask the question again. Of what is this man accused? … Of being a mystifier? … A usurper of glory? …

No! Simply of not having both feet on the ground. Essentially, is the indictment not the pretext for acquittal? … It is for you to judge! "

A crisscrossing in the athanor that is Damien’s brain. These are his dying hopes tumbling over each other as he views his epic as apprentice alchemist, as candidate for deity. Thanks to the fanciful interlude with legal airs, he understands a little better the nausea of that time recorded in his journal.

(July 10, continued

— I smoke, I paint. I feign and inhale the smell of paint. Furthermore, I shall sublimate blasphemy thanks to the blessing of this cursed image by a parish priest. And the presumptuous sacrilege will be in extenso only after consecration. ")

Hypocritically parading, a gentle breeze precedes the suffocating heat of the imminent heatwave. From one nest to another, the birds hide to feed their young. The dreamer does not notice them, too occupied with making his way through his memorable condensation.

Repeating on the screen of his memory the slightest gestures, the slightest thoughts. From the simplest to the most heavily charged with desire, he trembles with the abyssal cold of a stubborn contact with his unconscious, like the last spasms of a sacrificial animal whose throat has just been cut.

Kristos Anonymus, called Petrus Romanus, will not resurrect. He was stillborn with the arrival of the saviour! … Marilyn??? No, she is only an outlet for his submissive passion for art.

Damien knows himself saved from a descent into hell by the accidental intervention of his neighbour. He sees himself again on his balcony overlooking the rear courtyard, waiting for the steps of his life, Nielle’s. His journal confirms it.

(… July 11

— Hello Nielle! Beautiful sunshine today, isn’t it? … Tell me! … Are your absences always so long? …

— Yes! It’s because, as part of my work, I have to travel frequently!

— I’d like to show you my apartment. I’ve repainted it completely. What’s more, I’ve made a little mural that I have barely just finished.

— I’m sorry, but I’m tired. " She retorted while unlocking her door.

— Two minutes. I won’t even offer you coffee. I promise!

— All right, since you insist! … Where is this work?

— There! In my room, you see?

— Yes, it’s not bad. — Excuse me, I have to go. I can’t stand the smell, the fumes from the paint. It suffocates me! Bye! "

Already pale, she cleared out, far from suspecting that at her place she would find the same strong, nauseating smell she had just fled.

Why this invitation into my den? … What have I done? …

The assurance of the invincibility of my messianic madness reassured me. No matter the doubt and falseness of Petrus’s identity, Kristos’s or the Antichrist’s, these personalities stimulated my imagination. Am I not above all a creator… a dreamer?

Since you closed that door behind you, I have been asking myself Gauguin’s questions: "Where do we come from? Where are we going?" These interrogations invalidating the possibility of later reminiscences of my ecumenical wanderings. Without this armour, this shell of religious appearance that delighted my infamous ego, destroyed by your indifference, … I am afraid, I hurt. It heats me like an open wound, this man’s skin you force me to discover.

To become aware of this timely help pulling me from a larval schizophrenia is to admit that your mere presence is salutary to me, you, simply my neighbour. ")

***

The sun lights the bushes. Ardent, it does not extinguish them… Alarm clocks recall the social order. Zen is impossible for the dreamopath. He knows that written truths are only the death of certain spoken lies. The unspoken persisting in what-people-will-say!

Introspection rambles according to the emotions he decants. Damien is suspended between two times. That of his intense psychoanalysis and the origin of his need. The journal is the thread holding him above the abyss of his problems.

(July 12

— Afflicting difficulty, to find myself alone in solitude, this total and irrevocable partitioning. Everything has not been lived. Nothing is yet written. And yet I fight against the unsatisfied void of my desolation. It pursues me, like a rabid animal in this dead forest. Melancholy.

I miss Mylène. Lysianne even more. She who will return soon from her holidays.

My anxiety, I channel it toward you, muse. I cannot help it, it is instinctive! Even if you go up to your home without daring to look, without even checking whether I am there spying on your happiest, briefest movements…, you obsess me. Is your behaviour only naïve trust in me? … Or the effect of that indifference which horrifies me so?

The truth! I am not spying on you. I am watching myself… crack! Anguish is unavoidable. This playful masochism tugs at me. I examine you even from afar, in order to grant this new madness you have sown a valid reason to let me breathe.

Very much against my will, the fear of being surprised does not prevent me from risking the confrontation of sharp remarks or vain hoaxes. Latent paranoia, lateral cruelty? Keeping watch is on the threshold of pleasure.

At the slightest doubt that I hear an unpleasant remark about me circulating in this atmosphere of declining summer, from your windows to mine, without authorisation…, I take refuge like a mistreated child in the affection of my cat.

Yes to zootherapy! But…! … Sad cat, poor beast! She suffers with me. My knotted soul has bewitched hers. After-effects of my animistic beliefs? … All my sufferings, from the most stinging pains to more laconic moans, irradiate her with beta waves. When she sleeps and, in dreams, whines, she demonstrates too perfect a symbiosis with my ailment. This little tricolour animal is an enriched reflection of my greying aura.

Indisputable proof: at the end of the afternoon, I went window-shopping. To relax, to change my ideas, to move my frustrations elsewhere… With a nonchalant air, hands in my pockets, I returned a little less disappointed in myself. A tiny bit more annoyed by society.

A few metres from my new premises, meowing like a desperate creature to draw my attention… My cat! She is perched on the edge of a window, between half-closed shutters. Like a visiting card decorated with claws and debris, she had slipped into the third floor. By what spell did she succeed where I fail so lamentably? … Am I less than a feline? … A rat, perhaps?

Was it a masked invitation? … If so, who had thought of the ruse? The animal, the muse or chance? Is it so important to know the password if destiny authorised me to exchange a few sentences with Nielle?

Neighbour, where were you coming from? Strangely, you arrived a few moments later. — I am happy! — At last your eyes! What radiance! The closer I come to them, the more they make me flutter like a tightrope walker on the thread of my slender hopes. — You are there. — So close…!

Despite the pleasure, I approached you with a circumspect air.

— Hi! I don’t want to bother you, but my cat, I don’t know where or how, … has got into your place!

— Ah! Strange indeed! … Come to my place and get her. " She hurried to tell me with a smile so enthusiastic that it intimidated the warmth of summer.

This unhoped-for answer, I had not expected it. This invitation to the third floor represents that seventh heaven where I deeply aspire to die in voluptuousness.

Misfortune! Just as I was about to follow her, the programme of the evening was unexpectedly modified. The unforeseen presented itself gesticulating beneath the unpleasant ardour of Jean Brouillette, Bruce to his intimates. Second son of the ground-floor neighbours. The owners. — Everything seems to succeed for this young guy, who has the assurance of an envoy of the devil. Through his Valentinian rocker verve, his humorous juggling, he broke the already fragile charm of an instant filled with delicacy.

Burning my expectations at the stake of his flirtation, I became the excluded one. Once again, my karma requisitioned those favours it seemed to promise me. To the brutal and questionable intervention of her courtiers during the celebration was now added, impromptu, that of savage adolescence.

The implacable malediction modifying the unfolding of this simple and marvellous event broke my back. I did not feel equal to it. I confess it! I lack balls! Triumvirates do not suit me.

Again, flight toward the lost and nebulous horizons of torture in the absence of consciousness… Forget, even the regret of a real and promising communication, decapitated. Who knows? Perhaps even a soft and moist rapprochement, aborted.

More troubling still! The spite in Nielle’s expressive gaze, detecting my inability to fight the unexpected and my preference for slipping away before adversity by self-paralysing feelings and emotions.

A moment propitious to exchange. Wasted! … I should have reacted, lied while laughing at Bruce’s ramblings. Amused myself! … But my comatose emotion constrained me.

So I went back alone into my cramped retreat, my cat in my arms, looking at me, discouraged. ")

Silence, panicked by a cry, disappears completely, taking desperate refuge in the plastered partitions of the apartment. The window is open. A lost nightjar frightens the night, already vanished, and uselessly calls the morning in full growth.

The kettle hisses a familiar tune. The alert is given. The fire has its breath…, cut short. Ulcers or not. Stomach or not. A little milk, a touch of sugar in the carcinogenic chemistry of instant coffee.

The throat, still irritated by the emergence of frustration, slowly recovers from its accused redness. The discomfort does not prevent the evocation of a ghostly, off-text memory. Like a fog in exodus floating around the black notebook.

— My cowardice is a bladed weapon I assault myself with. Atrociously, this lack impales my chances of affirmation. Encouraging myself by alleging that this defect comes from my Judeo-Christian upbringing does not abstract its repercussion, nor does it release its guilt. Turning the other cheek when the first is red with vengeance has become a sacrosanct automatism, harmful to my evolution. Cross the threshold of tolerance! … Draw from myself courage and strength, to become a defector from submission and line up on the side of the aggressors! Live reality as I have never felt it! The delicious obligation. "

(July 12, continued

— Tomorrow, I shall have to use the essential qualities I denied myself. I must go to the village of my childhood, inform my good parents of the separation. Make them accept the sudden disappearance of my peaceful marriage without trying them too much. Do everything possible to bring them to understand, to accept my failure. Moreover, warn them that I shall announce the breaking of the family nucleus to Lysianne only when she returns from her holidays. A mountain of palpable conjectures, even for the dreamer I am.

This obstacle to be crossed alone will surely awaken in me values that will oblige me to face my devastating cowardice. )